EMEA News
New West Africa Port to Be Operational by 2016
A $1.55 billion deep-sea port planned for Lekki, Nigeria will be operational by the first quarter of 2016, according Lekki Port LFTZ Enterprise, a subsidiary of the Singapore-based Tolaram Group, which is developing the project, news site AllAfrica reports.
Managing director Haresh Aswani said fears that the project might be delayed by difficulty in finding financial institutions to back it are unfounded and that major construction work will start in less than a month once an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study and the World Bank guideline are complete.
The port will cater to containerised, liquid, and dry bulk cargo consignments, functioning as the gateway to West Africa, an area where there has been a gap in capacity, Aswani said.
"Demand is attractively high but the available capacity is not sufficient to meet this demand; that is why the economic viability of Lekki Port is founded on this un-met demand," he said.
"Our commitment to ensuring that we meet the scheduled operational date has seen us spare nothing in achieving it and as at today, we are happy to confidently say that all market engineering and impact studies have been completed over the last 6 years, likewise the Lekki port site has been gazetted as port area by the federal government."
The port, which will be part of the Lagos Free Trade Zone, will have deepwater berths with a 670-meter turning circle and a 14-meter-deep harbour basin, according to the project's website, which also says demand for container capacity in Lagos is expected to reach over 2.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) by 2015.
